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As Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and horror is shifting to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official crackdown against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, divisive views but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in people – in our capacity for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, light and love was the message of faith.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Witness the harmful message of division from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the light and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Naturally, both things are true. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of profound beauty, of clear azure skies above sea and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, outrage, melancholy, confusion and grief we need each other more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and society will be elusive this extended, draining summer.