Judy Patkin became aware of the plight of Soviet Jews in 1970 when she began to read about the Leningrad Trials. At about the same time, she met an emigre from the Soviet Union. He told her and others about friends who were jailed because they wanted to leave the country. Those stories brought to life newspaper accounts of the plight of refuseniks and eventually led Patkin and several other Bostonians to found Action for Soviet Jewry — a group dedicated to not only aiding refuseniks through missions to the Soviet Union but also influencing public opinion in the United States.