Imanuel (or in some documents Kimanuel) Davidashvili was born in 1908 in Akhaltsikhe, southern Georgia, close to the Turkish border. He completed six grades of general school and in 1925 graduated from an Akhaltsikhe religious school. From 1925-1927 he served as a khakham (rabbi) with the Jewish community of his native town. In the 1920s, Jews were increasingly leaving the town; in 1928, Imanuel Davidashvili also left Akhaltsikhe, for Tbilisi. Even in the capital city of Georgia, the Akhaltsikhe Jews lived somewhat apart of the rest of the Georgian Jews. Davidashvili became khakham of the Akhaltsikhe synagogue community in Tbilisi.
In 1941, with the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, Davidashvili was drafted into the Red Army, but in 1942, following an injury, he was released from military service. From 1942, he continued to serve as a khakham in Tbilisi.
In 1970 the Soviet authorities approached rabbis in the main centers of the Soviet Union, demanding that they sign an anti-Israeli declaration that had been prepared by Moscow officials. Imanuel Davidashvili refused to sign. In 1971 he also refused to go to Moscow to take part, as a representative of the Tbilisi Jews, in a conference which was to condemn Zionism and the "slander against" the Jews living in the Soviet Union that had supposedly been propounded by Zionists at a recent congress in Brussels.
In 1973, Davidashvili moved to Israel. He died in 1985.
