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While the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of initial surprise, grief and terror is segueing to fury and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional fight against antisemitism 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 humanity is so sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, divisive views but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in people – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has failed us so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and cultural solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid gloom), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Togetherness, light and love was the message of belief.

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

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

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of clear azure skies above sea and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

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

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

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