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As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the national disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, grief and terror is shifting to fury and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official crackdown against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

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

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in our potential for compassion – has let us down so acutely. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to aid others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, light and love was the message of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

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

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

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we require 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 sadly, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and society will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.