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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the collective disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities 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 previously missed the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and dread of faith-based targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger faith. I lament, because believing in people – in our potential for compassion – has failed us so acutely. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and ethnic unity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

In keeping with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid gloom), there was so much fitting reference of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and compassion was the essence of belief.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear quite the same again.’

And yet elements of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly swiftly with division, blame and recrimination.

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of division from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the light and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, 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 residence when the security agency 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 individuals not guns that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential actors.

In this city of immense beauty, of clear azure skies above sea and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of fear, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we require 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 the community will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.