As Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate shock, grief and terror is segueing to anger and bitter division.

Those who have not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as they are to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a national listening it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, divisive views but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater faith. I lament, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human goodness.

© The Guardian