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As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, 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 anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

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

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

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

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in our potential for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and ethnic solidarity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation 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 responded so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the harmful message of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the light and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine azure skies above ocean and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

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

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and loss 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 society will be elusive this long, enervating summer.