Chaim Tchernowitz (1871-1949), also known by his pen name Rav Tzair, was a Russian-American rabbi, author, teacher, and publicist.
[2] He had close relationships with many of the secular Jewish intellectuals who lived there at the time: Deeply embedded in Odessa’s enlightened circles, Tchernowitz served as a minister to the faithful and the faithless—a traditionalist among iconoclasts, a rabbi of atheists and skeptics.
In this capacity, he forged relationships with such intellectual and cultural luminaries as Mendele Mokher Seforim... Ahad Ha'am... and Simon Dubnow[2]In Odessa he founded his own yeshiva; in 1907, it became a rabbinical seminary.
[7] This institution attracted figures including Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Joseph Klausner,[5] and Yehezkel Kaufmann.
[2] In 1939[2] or 1940,[5] he founded and served as editor of the Hebrew-language journal Bitzaron, which published articles by leading figures on Jewish religious, cultural, and political topics.