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As the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like no other.

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

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of initial surprise, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and fear of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because having faith in people – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has failed us so acutely. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for hope.

Unity, light and love was the essence of belief.

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

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

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

Witness the dangerous message of division from veteran agitators of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days 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 likely need most.

But tragically, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and society will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.