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While Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the collective disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate surprise, grief and horror is shifting to anger and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. 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 right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and dread of faith-based persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive stances but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in people – in our capacity for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and cultural unity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the symbolism of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and love was the message of faith.

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

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

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

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its potential actors.

In this city of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above sea and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

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 times of anxiety, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we need each other more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that unity in public life and society will be hard to find this long, draining summer.