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As Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of initial surprise, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic official fight against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and fear of faith-based targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, divisive views but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in our potential for compassion – has failed us so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and ethnic solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the meaning of Hanukah (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and love was the message of faith.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly quickly with division, blame and accusation.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful message of division from veteran agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the probe was still active.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the light and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so openly and consistently warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of profound splendor, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we require each other now more than ever.

The reassurance of community – the binding force 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 elusive this extended, draining summer.