Doctor Aušra Pažėraitė studied painting at Juozas Naujalis Secondary School of Art, and later studied mathematics, philosophy, and religion at Vilnius University. In 1995, she earned a Master’s degree in philosophy and in 1998, a Master’s degree in religious studies. In 2003, she defended her thesis on, Izraelis Salanteris ir musar judėjimas Lietuvoje XIX amžiuje (The Israel Salanter and the Musar movement in Lithuania in the XIX c.) and earned a Doctorate of Humanitarian Sciences (History) at Kaunas’ Vytautas Magnum University. Several times she has worked on probation at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She studied Hebrew at the Judaic Centre at Vilnius University, and Yiddish at the Centre of Cultural Communities.

Aušra Pažėraitė is a lecturer in the Centre for Religious Studies and Research at Vilnius University. She has published several articles about the tsarist Jewish educational reforms in XIX c., Maimonid philosophy, and the Musar movement. Her lectures include: “Fundamentals of Judaism (Second Temple era, rabbinic Judaism)”, “The Jewish mystique”, “Judaism and Christianity”, “E. Levin: Talmud readings” and “Rabbinic hermeneutics: M. Maimonid”.

In 2005, the publishing house “Versus aureus” published a study of A. Požėraitė Litvakiško ortodoksinio judaizmo formavimas (The formation of the Litvak Orthodox Judaism). The book analyses the processes that stimulated the formation of Litvak Orthodox Judaism.

The photo is from the personal archive of the author.