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While Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the collective temperament after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of initial shock, grief and terror is segueing to anger and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

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

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

This is a period when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the symbolism of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the message of faith.

‘Our public places may not look exactly as they did again.’

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

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

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

Government has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

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

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we require each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and the community will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.