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Fiddler on the Roof, the musical, was first produced on Broadway in 1964 — with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein (who also wrote Zorba). It is based on the story Tevye and his Daughters (or Tevye the Dairyman) and other tales, published in 1894 by Sholem Aleichem, whose real name was Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich.
From Wikipedia: “Sholem Aleichem died in New York on May 13, 1916 from tuberculosis and diabetes, aged 57, while working on his last novel, Motl, Peysi the Cantor’s Son, and was buried at Old Mount Carmel cemetery in Queens. At the time, his funeral was one of the largest in New York City history, with an estimated 100,000 mourners. The next day, his will was printed in the New York Times and was read into the Congressional Record of the United States.”
In his will, Sholem Aleichem writes that he wished to be buried “not among aristocrats or the powerful, but among plain Jewish laborers, among the very people itself….” (New York Times, Wednesday, May 17, 1916)