His Fight for Others’ Human Rights Led to a Struggle for his Own

"Russian Silhouette" is the memoir of Daniel M. Jaffe, a Jewish Princeton student who spends two summers in the oppressive, antisemitic USSR of the late 1970s. While there, he befriends Soviet Jews, refuseniks (Soviet Jews denied government permission to emigrate), and political dissidents who are living under constant government threat.

The KGB surveils and arrests Daniel, warning him never to return. He returns anyway. Over multiple subsequent trips behind the Iron Curtain, Daniel quietly brings in money, medicine, and vital information from Western human rights organizations to support his friends and others, who are, one by one, being arrested, imprisoned, then sentenced to labor camp or internal exile. Back in the US, Daniel leads a Jewish human rights committee at Harvard Law School, translating and circulating smuggled dissident trial transcripts to help promote international protest campaigns in efforts to free political prisoners.

But "Russian Silhouette" is more than a Cold War thriller; it is a memoir of personal liberation. Inspired by his friends' courage in the face of authoritarianism, Daniel gains the strength to come out as gay and fight for civil rights at home. Russian Silhouette demonstrates the power of political activism and tikkun olam—the imperative to repair the world—to help others and heal oneself.