Iakov Aleksandrovich Brafman, commonly known as Jacob Brafman, was a Russian Jew from near Minsk, who became notable for converting first to Lutheranism and then the Russian Orthodox Church. He was a leading polemicist against the kahal and the Talmud. Brafman's works The Local and Universal Jewish Brotherhoods (1868) and The Book of the Kahal (1869) were foundational texts in establishing a theoretical basis to modern anti-Jewish thought in Russia and established a framework for themes later covered in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.