Background
He was born in Tskhinvali, Georgia (then part of the Russian Empire) into a family of rabbis.
He was born in Tskhinvali, Georgia (then part of the Russian Empire) into a family of rabbis.
He was educated in Jewish philosophy and history at Slutsk and Vilnius where he became exposed to Zionist ideas. In, he attended the Sixth Zionist Congress in Basel.
His growing influence was opposed by a group of anti-Zionist rabbis and the so-called "assimilationist" Jewish intellectuals who put forward the thesis that the Georgian Jews were ethnic Georgians and "Israelites by religion."
Next year, he managed to secure the free passage for several Georgian Jewish families to the Land of Israel, launching the first large wave of Aliyah from Georgia. Soon, David Baazov was also arrested and sentenced to death for "Zionist activities". The sentence was later commuted to exile in Siberia.
In 1945, he returned to the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic and chiefly engaged in educational activities.
The Georgian Jews" History Museum in Tbilisi has been named after him.
His program was an amalgam of moderate orthodox religiosity, enlightenment, and Zionism. Returning to Georgia, Baazov became a rabbi in the town of Oni and quickly emerged as a leader of Zionism in Georgia. In, Baazov founded the first Georgian-Jewish Zionist paper ebraelis khma ("The Voice of Jew") and helped organize the All-Jewish Congress in Tbilisi which included representatives from every Georgian and Russian Jewish community in the country, except for Kutaisi, which had become the center of the Jewish anti-Zionism.