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While Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and horror is segueing to anger and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger faith. I lament, because having faith in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural unity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, light and love was the message of faith.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from veteran fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the light and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its potential actors.

In this city of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of fear, anger, melancholy, confusion and grief we need each other now 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 politics and the community will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.