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As Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like no other.

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

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and horror is shifting to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

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

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has let us down so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and cultural unity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid darkness), there was so much appropriate reference 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, blame and recrimination.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical chance to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the hope and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, each point are valid. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of pristine azure skies above ocean and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

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

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we require each other now more than ever.

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

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