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As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, unfortunately, like no other.

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 mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate surprise, sorrow and terror is shifting to anger 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 much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

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 fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and dread of faith-based persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and ethnic unity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, light and compassion was the message of belief.

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

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

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

Observe the harmful message of division from veteran fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the light and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its potential actors.

In this city of immense beauty, of clear blue heavens above ocean and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of fear, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we require each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and the community will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.