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As the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the national disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of initial surprise, sorrow and horror is shifting to anger and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic official crackdown against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely diminished. This is especially 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 banal hot takes of those with blistering, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater faith. I lament, because having faith in people – in our potential for compassion – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and cultural unity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (light amid gloom), there was so much fitting reference of the need for hope.

Togetherness, light and love was the message of faith.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and recrimination.

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

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from longstanding agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

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, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of pristine blue heavens above sea and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place 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 culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

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

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and the community will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.