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While Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the collective temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of initial surprise, grief and terror is shifting to anger and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official crackdown against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

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

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in our potential for kindness – has let us down so acutely. A different source, a greater power, 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 bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, light and love was the essence of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity responded so disgustingly swiftly with division, blame and recrimination.

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

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Government has a daunting job 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 uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so openly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, each point are true. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of pristine blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same 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 meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

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

The reassurance of togetherness – the human glue 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 the community will be hard to find this long, draining summer.