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As Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the national disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside 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 immediate shock, grief and terror is shifting to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s potential for kindness – 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 instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope and love was the essence of faith.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

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

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so openly and consistently alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above sea and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or nature.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, 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 sadly, all of the portents are that unity in politics and the community will be hard to find this long, draining summer.