Sidebar: Hiyo, Silverman

What’s a nice Jewish boy like Walter Zweifler doing looking for a hunt?

The South Orange resident’s 47-year love affair with horses began on a whim, with a distinctly Yiddische tam on Easter Sunday in 1959 (stay with me). He was 27, had just moved to New York City, and “everyone was out walking in the Easter Parade,” he said.

The holiday festivities held no appeal for him but the celebratory mood of the city was another matter. So he grabbed the opportunity to join a friend on horseback. He put on a Harris tweed coat, hoping to offset one minor issue: he was a riding neophyte.

“We went up to 92nd Street and Columbus Avenue and rented a horse.” Once in Central Park, he faked it. “I had never ridden before in my life. I did whatever she did. We stopped at Tavern on the Green, casually tied up our horses around a tree as though we had done this all the time, and walked in and had a couple of Bloody Marys and eggs benedict. It was phenomenal!”

The sport even played a role in his courtship of his wife, Roberta. When she fell off a horse, his reaction, he said, revealed “my calm under stress and strain. I was able to calm her horse and help her remount. It was a building block for our relationship.”

Decades later, after a break for, well, most of his adult life, Zweifler is back in the saddle again. And on April 30, Zweifler, at 74, was the oldest entrant (and ribbon winner) in a show at the Essex Equestrian Center in West Orange.

There were, however, some bumps along the way, for the obstacle course of true love never does run smooth. In 1970, the Zweiflers moved to South Orange. They joined Oheb Shalom Congregation and had two children, and Zweifler set out to build his career. Horseback riding faded out of his life for more than 30 years, until his semi-retirement.

Eighteen months ago, an old horseback-riding colleague suggested he saddle up.

It was then he noticed a packet of gift certificates for lessons at the equestrian center that his wife had given him seven years earlier; it was still sitting on a windowsill in their home.

He took the certificates, long expired, and showed up at the stable, which had changed hands three times since the packet had been purchased. The current owner honored the gift anyway. “It’s just like I never left,” Zweifler said. “It was amazing. I felt very comfortable. I want to keep going faster.”

But what he’d really like to do, he said during a conversation at the stable, just after soothing his mount Skipper with some carrots, is to ride with a hunt. “It’s not very Jewish,” he acknowledged (killing animals for sport is against Jewish law); he does, however, have several Jewish friends who engage in the activity.

It may be everything that goes on around the hunt that most appeals to Zweifler. “I like to drink bourbon. I like the camaraderie of it. I love the idea of getting up and riding and jumping.”

(In fact, according to Dennis Foster, executive director of the Masters of Foxhounds Association of North America, American hunting focuses on the chase rather than the kill. “I hunt with all the clubs throughout North America, and I can tell you that seldom is there a fox or coyote killed,” he said.)

Meanwhile, Zweifler has been trying to stir up interest in a riding committee at Oheb Shalom, he said with a wink, but so far, he hasn’t met with success. “I can’t even get my rabbi to join me for racket ball. I guess he’s too busy saving lives and doing that sort of thing,” he quipped.

For now, Zweifler does not own his own horse and rides whichever mount his teacher, Sheila Hunter, thinks is appropriate. Skipper, his current equine partner, is, at 15, an older horse.

Asked if he’d like to own a horse, he said, “My wife would blow her stack if I ever did. She’d rather give the money to United Jewish Appeal.”

And with that, Zweifler donned his black velvet riding cap and headed for the stable, where he offered Skipper some soothing words and a kiss, and rode off.