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While Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of initial shock, grief and terror is segueing to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or anywhere else.

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

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger faith. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in our capacity for compassion – has failed us so acutely. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural unity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid gloom), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for lightness.

Unity, hope and love was the message of faith.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity reacted so disgustingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

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

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, 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 residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Of course, each point are true. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in culture or nature.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, anger, sadness, confusion and grief we need each other more than ever.

The reassurance of togetherness – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But sadly, all of the portents are that unity in public life and society will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.