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While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like no other.

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

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of immediate surprise, grief and horror is shifting to anger and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and fear of faith-based persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in our potential for compassion – has failed us so painfully. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and cultural unity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope 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 disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, blame and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the harmful message of division from longstanding agitators of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the light and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Naturally, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above sea and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of fear, anger, melancholy, confusion and loss we need each other more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that unity in public life and the community will be elusive this long, enervating summer.