ABSTRACT
The Coda turns to the question underlying the novels discussed in this book about the possibility of love and redemption, but also posits a futurity rooted in the metaphysical teachings of Rabbi Isaac Abraham Kook and Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik. Sociologists Zygmunt Bauman and Eva Illouz expose the detachment of sex from romance in postmodern love, but Jewish thinkers such as Shagar discern more positive attitudes in postmodernism. They offer a way out of the impasse in postmodern novels of random events in a world of chance that renders free choice absurd. Free will and probability do not necessarily contradict each other but can form a paradoxical combination in a reassessment of the inseparable relationship of the individual with collective destiny and history.
