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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, unfortunately, like no other.

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

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

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official crackdown against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in our capacity for kindness – has let us down so painfully. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and ethnic unity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a call of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, light and love was the essence of belief.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous message of division from veteran agitators of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

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

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of fear, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we need each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and society will be hard to find this long, draining summer.