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As the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, grief and horror is shifting to fury and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and dread of faith-based persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater faith. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in our capacity for compassion – has let us down so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and ethnic unity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, light and compassion was the essence of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly swiftly with division, blame and recrimination.

Some politicians moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

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

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above ocean and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, anger, sadness, confusion and grief we require each other now 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 unity in politics and the community will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.