Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area.

Saul’s Restaurant and Deli, which has been serving the Bay Area for 34 years, is changing hands. In a statement posted at the Berkeley restaurant, current owners Karen Adelman and Peter Levitt said they are ready to move on.

“We have enjoyed this project with all of our hearts and souls,” Adelman and Levitt said in the statement posted on Feb. 20. “But life is short, and it is a great big world, and there are things that must be done.”

Adelman and Levitt previously planned to sell the business in 2016 but ended up staying on. They said the new owner will be announced soon.

A Jewish-owned eatery has been on the Saul’s site since 1955. In the 1970s it became a full-fledged deli called Rosenthal’s. In 1986, Andra Lichtenstein led a group of investors to buy the place, which was renamed Saul’s in honor of her late father.

Adelman started there as a waitress, then became co-manager with Levitt (the two were married at the time). They negotiated to buy Saul’s in 1996 and they put their own stamp on the business by switching from industrially produced meats to sustainable, a Berkeley decision that was ahead of its time.

The statement says Adelman and Levitt will work with the new owner during the transition and assures customers that “Saul’s is staying Saul’s.”