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As the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the national temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of initial surprise, sorrow and horror is shifting to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic official fight against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment 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 faith-based targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing views but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because having faith in people – in our potential for kindness – has failed us so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and cultural unity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid gloom), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the message of belief.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous message of disunity from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the light and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so openly and consistently warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of profound beauty, 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 incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more in order.

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

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and society will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.