Mark Braverman (born 1948) is an American Jewish clinical psychologist, author, and Executive Director of Kairos USA. Raised in a Conservative Jewish family in Philadelphia with ancestral ties to the Old City of Jerusalem, he worked for decades specializing in trauma and crisis response. Following visits to Israel and the West Bank, where he observed military rule and met with local activists, he shifted his career toward full-time advocacy, focused on challenging political Zionism and building interfaith solidarity movements.
As an author and theologian, Braverman has published extensive critiques of Middle Eastern geopolitics and post-Holocaust Christian theology. In his 2010 book, Fatal Embrace: Christians, Jews, and the Search for Peace in the Holy Land, he analyzed how Western Christian guilt led to uncritical support for Israeli policies. His 2013 follow-up, A Wall in Jerusalem: Hope, Healing, and the Struggle for Justice in Israel and Palestine, examined the psychological and physical impacts of physical segregation and occupation on both Israelis and Palestinians.
Braverman co-founded Kairos USA in response to the 2009 Kairos Palestine Document, aiming to mobilize North American Christian denominations against the occupation. Through his leadership, he serves on the International Coordinating Committee of the Global Kairos for Justice Coalition and advises U.S. church bodies on adopting Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) resolutions. He consistently rejects traditional interfaith dialogue models that avoid political realities, arguing that true reconciliation requires addressing human rights and recognizing the Nakba.
Throughout his writings and public lectures, Braverman frames his opposition to state nationalism as a restoration of Jewish prophetic ethics, arguing that military occupation directly contradicts core Jewish teachings on justice and compassion. Emphasizing the urgent need to disentangle faith from state power, he maintains: “Our task is to rescue Judaism from an ideology that has hijacked the faith, continues to fuel global conflict, and has produced one of the most systematic and longstanding violations of human rights in the world today.”