A small taste of summer

As keen observers of Israeli life are aware, no self-respecting Israeli eats ice cream in the winter.

Krembo? Definitely.

Glidah chamah (literally, “warm ice cream” – basically, Krembo in an ice cream cone)? Absolutely.

But real ice cream? The kind that actually tastes good? The dairy kind which you keep in your freezer?

Not so much.

In fact, in the olden days, one couldn’t even buy ice cream in Israel during the winter.

But in light of the current unseasonably hot spell we’ve been experiencing here in Israel, Jameel’s post on the unique Israeli phrase, “pa’am shlishit glidah” (literally, “third time, ice cream” – loosely, “third time’s a charm”) couldn’t be more timely. Be sure to check out his post.*

And on a related note, you may recall that Our Shiputzim guest blogger Malke shared an amusing Heblish story about this expression in the comment section of the Heblish VI post:

…A TV sports broadcaster [was] interviewing a (non-Israeli) Maccabi Tel Aviv player [in English], after they lost (once again) in the Final Four (or Fay-nell Forr, for our Israeli children).

“So, this is the second time Maccabi has made it to the finals and lost. Do you think the third time will be ice cream?” [the interviewer asked.]

The tall, black basketball player looked at him as if he were from another planet. The broadcaster was, of course, translating the Hebrew phrase, pa'am shlishit glidah…

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*And I’m not just saying that because he wrote some kind things about this blog in his post… :-)