Tamara Or studied Jewish Studies and History at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Subsequently, she was employed by the German Research Foundation as a research assistant in two international research projects at the Freie Universität Berlin (doctorate 2008) and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich (post-doc) and cooperated closely with academic institutions in the USA, Israel and Russia. She is the author of three academic monographs on gender roles in rabbinic literature, German-Zionist women's organisations (dissertation) and Jewish diaspora cultures and migration movements from Eastern Europe in the first half of the 20th century (habilitation thesis), among others.

Since April 2016, she has been managing director of the Foundation German-Israeli Future Forum (www.dizf.de). Previously, she worked as a consultant for doctoral funding at the Studienwerk and then as a consultant to the Executive Board of Ralf Fücks for the Heinrich Böll Foundation.