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While Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of immediate surprise, grief and horror is segueing to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate 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 fear of faith-based persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger faith. I lament, because believing in people – in our potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to aid others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural unity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the message of faith.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear exactly as they did again.’

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

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

Observe the dangerous message of division from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

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

In this city of immense splendor, of pristine blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or nature.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of fear, outrage, melancholy, confusion and loss we need each other now more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the indicators are that unity in politics and society will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.