Welcome to Weekend Reading, a new feature at contentions: thought-provoking selections from the COMMENTARY archive to help tide you over until Monday. One of the great pleasures of being a part of COMMENTARY lies in our ability to give our readers glimpses into the magazine’s fascinating past. This weekend we’d like to offer you a handful of stories that first appeared in our pages (in three cases, for the first time in English) and that are among the acknowledged greats of the 20th century. Enjoy.

First Love
Isaac Babel

Looking for Mr. Green
Saul Bellow

Forevermore
S. Y. Agnon

Idiots First
Bernard Malamud

Yentl the Yeshiva Boy
Isaac Bashevis Singer

Envy; or, Yiddish in America
Cynthia Ozick