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While Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews 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 not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of faith-based targeting on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

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

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and cultural unity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, light and love was the essence of belief.

‘Our public places may not appear quite the same again.’

And yet segments of the Australian polity reacted so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

Some politicians moved straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the hope and, importantly, 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 woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so openly and consistently alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

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

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, anger, sadness, confusion and grief we require each other now more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and society will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.