Judith Friedlander was born in 1937 in Budapest, Hungary. At a young age she survived the Holocaust, miraculously, with her family intact. After finishing 2 Lycée in 1949, her family decided to emigrate to the United States. They settled in the Washington Heights section of New York City where Judith attended George Washington High School. After graduating high school she attended Hunter College finishing with high marks and won a scholarship to study at the Sorbonne in France.

During the interim, Judith married and she and her new husband left for Europe to fulfill her scholarship. Upon returning to the United States (the Bronx, New York) she gave birth to her first daughter and settled down to married life and motherhood. During that time she had another daughter she started working as a substitute teacher in various Bronx high schools. In 1969 tragedy struck as she lost her first daughter. After a period of mourning, Judith decided to utilize her knowledge of six languages and applied for a position with the United Nations. She was hired and began to work as an interpreter. This work required a lot of concentration and helped assuage her pain and grief over the loss of her first child. Her pain turned to joy with the birth to her third child, a son.

With the Jewish population changing in the Bronx, her family decided to relocate the synagogue they had established in 1952 to 163 East 69th Street on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Judith found herself in a new environment surrounded by five major hospitals. She decided to become a hospital volunteer and became active with various organizations, such as, Bikur Cholim, Synagogue Religious Council of UJA and their affiliated committees. She organized Chanukah and Purim parties for hospital patients and their families. She organized the Hershel Lisker Bikur Cholim, a place where out-of-town observant Jewish people with relatives in New York City hospitals could be accommodated with lodging and meals over Shabbat and the holidays.

In 1989 when her husband, Rabbi Abraham Friedlander, passed away, she took over the position of Adjunct Chaplain until her son, Rabbi Zvi-Hersh Friedlander, received his rabbinical degree. In 1999 the Board of Rabbis announced that they were opening the application process to Orthodox women who were not ordained rabbis to allow them to become certified chaplains.