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As the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the national temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

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

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional 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 deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and dread of faith-based targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive views but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in our potential for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and cultural unity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, light and love was the message of faith.

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

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

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the probe was still active.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of clear blue heavens above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

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

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

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

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that unity in public life and the community will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.