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

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the national temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

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

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or anywhere else.

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

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so painfully. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the meaning of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and compassion was the essence of faith.

‘Our public places may not look exactly as they did again.’

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

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the crime scene 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 bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

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

In this city of immense splendor, of clear blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these times of fear, anger, sadness, bewilderment and grief we require each other now more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.