After about 2 years of working in the business sector, he became in 1924 a high school chemistry teacher in the New York City Department of Education.
In 1930 Simon and Schuster published Jaffe's book Crucibles: The Lives of the Great Chemists, a collection of biographies of famous chemists, including Bernard of Treves, Paracelsus, Johann Joachim Becher, Joseph Priestley, Henry Cavendish, Antoine Lavoisier, Marie Curie, J. J. Thomson, Henry Moseley, and Irving Langmuir.
[2] In 1935 Jaffe was appointed head of the Physical Sciences Department at Midwood, Brooklyn's Bushwick High School and his book New World of Chemistry was published by Silver, Burdett & Company.
[4][5] In 1930 the 1st edition of Jaffe's book Crucibles won for him the Francis Bacon Award for Humanizing Knowledge, sponsored by Forum Magazine and by Simon and Schuster.
At the award ceremony in New York City, John Dewey presented a gold medal and a check for $7,500 in prize money to Jaffe.