In 1903, he attended the
Sixth Zionist Congress in
Basel. Returning to Georgia, Baazov became a rabbi in the town of
Oni and quickly emerged as a leader of Zionism in Georgia. 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." In 1918, 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. At that time, he served as a rabbi in
Akhaltsikhe and exploited his friendly ties with a local
Muslim clergy to save many Christians during a brief
Ottoman occupation of the area in 1918. After the
Sovietization of Georgia in 1921, Baazov, aided by his son, the leading Georgian-Jewish writer
Gerzel Baazov, organized Jewish schools across the country and later founded the magazine
makaveeli ("
Maccabean") which was closed by the Soviet authorities during a crackdown on Georgian Jewish cultural institutions after the 1924
anti-Soviet August Uprising in Georgia. 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. During the
purge of 1938, both of his sons were arrested by the Soviet
NKVD and Gerzel was executed. 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 SSR and chiefly engaged in educational activities. ==Legacy==