[1] The 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof, based on Aleichem's stories about Tevye the Dairyman, was the first commercially successful English-language stage production about Jewish life in Eastern Europe.

[5] However, a failed business affair plunged the family into poverty and Solomon Rabinovich grew up in reduced circumstances.

During 1877-1880 in Sofijka village, Bohuslav region, he spent three years tutoring a wealthy landowner's daughter,[7] Olga (Hodel) Loev (1865–1942).

Daughter Marusi (who would one day publish "My Father, Sholom Aleichem" under her married name Marie Waife-Goldberg) was born in 1892.

In 1909, in celebration of his 25th Jubilee as a writer, his friend and colleague Jacob Dinezon spearheaded a committee with Dr. Gershon Levine, Abraham Podlishevsky, and Noach Pryłucki to buy back the publishing rights to Sholem Aleichem’s works from various publishers for his sole use in order to provide him with a steady income.

If I am fated to live a few years longer than I have been expecting, I shall doubtless be able to say that it’s your fault, yours and that of all the other friends who have done so much to carry out your idea of ‘the redemption of the imprisoned.’”[13]Sholem Aleichem moved to New York City again with his family in 1914.

His son, Misha, ill with tuberculosis, was not permitted entry under United States immigration laws and remained in Switzerland with his sister Emma.

In 1883, when he was 24 years old, he published his first Yiddish story, צוויי שטיינער Tsvey Shteyner ("Two Stones"), using for the first time the pseudonym Sholem Aleichem.

In August 1904, Sholem Aleichem edited הילף : א זאַמלבוך פיר ליטעראטור אונ קונסט Hilf: a Zaml-Bukh fir Literatur un Kunst ("Help: An Anthology for Literature and Art"; Warsaw, 1904) and himself translated three stories submitted by Tolstoy (Esarhaddon, King of Assyria; Work, Death and Sickness; The Three Questions) as well as contributions by other prominent Russian writers, including Chekhov, in aid of the victims of the Kishinev pogrom.

Sholem Aleichem died in New York on May 13, 1916, from tuberculosis and diabetes,[20] aged 57, while working on his last novel, Motl, Peysi the Cantor's Son, and was buried at Old Mount Carmel cemetery in Queens.

Sholem Aleichem's will contained detailed instructions to family and friends with regard to burial arrangements and marking his yahrtzeit.

The celebrations continue to the present day, and, in recent years, have been held at the Brotherhood Synagogue on Gramercy Park South in New York City, where they are open to the public.

[24] He composed the text to be engraved on his tombstone in Yiddish, given here in transliteration: Do ligt a yid a posheter Geshriben yidish-daitsh far vayber Un faren prosten folk hot er geven a humorist a shrayber

Un dafka demolt geven der oylem hot gelacht geklutchet un fleg zikh fleyen Doch er gekrenkt dos veys nor got Besod, az keyner zol nit zeen Here lies a Jew a simple one, Wrote Yiddish-German (translations) for women and for the regular folk, was a writer of humor

In New York City in 1996, East 33rd Street between Park and Madison Avenue is additionally named "Sholem Aleichem Place".

[26] On March 2, 2009, 150 years after his birth, the National Bank of Ukraine issued an anniversary coin depicting and celebrating Aleichem.

[citation needed] In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil a library named BIBSA – Biblioteca Sholem Aleichem was founded in 1915 as a Zionist institution by a local Jewish group.

Next year, in 1916, the same group that created BIBSA founded a Jewish school named Escola Sholem Aleichem; it closed in 1997.

BIBSA had a very active theatrical program in Yiddish for more than 50 years since its foundation and consistently performed Sholem Aleichem plays.

[36] The website features interactive maps and timelines,[37] recommended readings,[38] as well as a list of centennial celebration events taking place worldwide.

[43] Sholem Aleichem's granddaughter, Bel Kaufman, by his daughter Lala (Lyalya), was an American author, most widely known for her novel, Up the Down Staircase, published in 1964, which was adapted to the stage and also made into a motion picture in 1967, starring Sandy Dennis.