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While the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the collective disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of initial surprise, grief and terror is shifting to fury and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, 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 targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing views but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because having faith in people – in our capacity for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the symbolism of Hanukah (light amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for hope.

Togetherness, light and compassion was the message of belief.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear exactly as they did again.’

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous message of disunity from veteran fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

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

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient 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 antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

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

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and grief 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 indicators are that cohesion in politics and the community will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.