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As Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat set to the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the national temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

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

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a call of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of Hanukah (illumination amid darkness), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the message of faith.

‘Our public places may not appear quite the same again.’

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, blame and recrimination.

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

Observe the dangerous message of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

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

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and consistently warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its potential actors.

In this city of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

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

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

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in public life and the community will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.