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As Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the national temperament after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of initial shock, grief and horror is shifting to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive views but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in our capacity for kindness – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and cultural solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

Consistent with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, hope and love was the message of faith.

‘Our public places may not look quite the same again.’

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and recrimination.

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

Witness the harmful rhetoric of disunity from veteran agitators of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, 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 publicly and consistently warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Naturally, each point are true. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we need each other now more than ever.

The reassurance of togetherness – 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 public life and society will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.