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As Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the national temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of initial surprise, grief and terror is segueing to anger and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic official crackdown against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of faith-based targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has failed us so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to aid others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid gloom), there was so much fitting reference of the need for hope.

Togetherness, hope and love was the essence of faith.

‘Our shared community spaces may not look exactly as they did again.’

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the hope and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, outrage, melancholy, confusion and loss we require each other more than ever.

The reassurance of community – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But sadly, all of the indicators are that cohesion in public life and society will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.