Ofira earned her PhD in sociocultural anthropology with a graduate certificate in Jewish Culture and Society at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her dissertation, titled, “Scaling Down Judaism: The Politics of Tradition and Change among Liberal Observant Jews in Israel,” traces the shifting locus of religious authority in religious-Zionist communities - from formal institutions and rabbinical leaders to “the people.” She won research grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the American Academy for Jewish Research, and University of Illinois’ Graduate College, and was awarded the Gendell and Shiner Family Fellowship.
Ofira completed postdoctoral research at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, where she continued to explore intersections of religion, gender, and citizenship in Jewish Orthodox communities. Her studies were published in the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Religions, and Politika (in Hebrew). She is currently pursuing her interest in public policy as a postdoctoral fellow in Mimshak, an environmental science and policy fellowship program. As part of her fellowship, she is assigned as a policy adviser at the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.