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While Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the collective disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of initial surprise, grief and terror is shifting to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and dread of faith-based persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in our capacity for kindness – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a call of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the symbolism of Hanukah (illumination amid gloom), there was so much fitting reference of the need for hope.

Togetherness, light and compassion was the message of faith.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear quite the same again.’

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

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the light and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a large public 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 publicly and consistently alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of pristine azure skies above ocean and sand, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

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

The reassurance of community – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we likely need most.

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in public life and society will be elusive this extended, draining summer.