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While Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the national temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate surprise, sorrow and terror is segueing to anger and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, 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 genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in our capacity for compassion – has failed us so acutely. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered 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 acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, light and love was the message of belief.

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

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

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous message of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Government has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the hope and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a large 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 repeatedly warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its possible actors.

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

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, anger, melancholy, confusion and grief we need each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and the community will be elusive this long, enervating summer.