Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Sholem Aleichem and Mark Twain had kind of a similar thing going on—folksy humor, silly-sounding pen names—and were frequently compared. When Mark Twain heard people referring to Sholem Aleichem as "the Jewish Mark Twain," he asked people to tell the other writer that Twain preferred being called "the American Sholem Aleichem." That's mad respect, yo! (Source)
Before Sholem Aleichem got his hands on it, Yiddish was considered a lowbrow, vulgar language. (Source)
After the series of pogroms in 1905-1906 that are described in Tevye, Sholem Aleichem moved to America and spent the rest of his life traveling around before dying at 57 of tuberculosis and diabetes. (Source)