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While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the national disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of initial surprise, grief and horror is segueing to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has failed us so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the meaning of Hanukah (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and love was the essence of faith.

‘Our public places may not appear exactly as they did again.’

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

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful message of disunity from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the probe was still active.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the hope and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, each point are valid. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, sadness, confusion and grief we need each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that unity in politics and the community will be hard to find this long, draining summer.