David Leventhal, the longtime owner of Highland Park institution Cecil’s Deli, has died.

Leventhal, 85, died on Friday, Feb. 2. He was born in 1939 in Brooklyn, New York, and his family moved to the Twin Cities in 1950.

David and Sheila Leventhal laugh as they pose for a photo at Cecil’s Deli on Cleveland in St. Paul on Tuesday, June 4, 2019. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

In 1980, Leventhal and his wife, Sheila, took over the delicatessen that Sheila’s parents, Cecil and Faye Glickman, had opened in 1949. Throughout the years, Leventhal and his family have become familiar faces behind the counter, serving up fresh-baked challah, pastrami and other Jewish staples.

“The most fun thing about this is that I get to work with my family and have so many customers who we know on a first-name basis,” Leventhal said in 2019, on the deli’s 70th anniversary.

Outside of the deli, Leventhal had a lifelong interest in Japanese culture and martial arts. He earned a 5th-degree black belt in Judo and helped found Midway Judo in West St. Paul, where he became internationally renowned as a coach and referee, his family wrote in an obituary. He also held a degree in Japanese history from the University of Minnesota and traveled to Japan several times.

After college, he enlisted in the Air National Guard, and stayed active in the Minnesota chapter of the Jewish War Veterans Organization for many years, his family said.

Leventhal is survived by his wife of 63 years, Sheila, and their four children and seven grandchildren. Services have already been held.

When Leventhal first started working at Cecil’s, around the time he and Sheila were married in the early 1960s, St. Paul was home to more than a dozen Jewish delis, Leventhal told the Pioneer Press a few years ago. Since then, all but Cecil’s have closed.

“Like any business, it’s hard work. But we try to have fun,” he said. “If it was just all hard work and no fun, we wouldn’t be doing it.”

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