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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, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the national disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate surprise, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or anywhere else.

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

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has let us down so acutely. A different source, a greater power, 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 bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, light and love was the essence of belief.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Observe the harmful message of division from longstanding agitators of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting 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 judged as likely, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem 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 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 Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of fear, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we need 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 unity in public life and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.