The Hebrew expression for “third time’s a charm” is pa’am shlishi glida which translates to “third time is ice cream.”
It comes from the time of the British Mandate when the English would say, “If I see you a third time, I’ll scream.” Israelis heard “ice cream” and stuck with it.
Thanks for reminding us of this one, Brad. It’s one of my favorites!
Zabaj: the Junk in Israel's Trunk 
ridiculous! makes me giggle.
Thank you! I always wondered what the heck was going on with this one. It happened most recently where I bumped into someone 2 times in 2 different cities in the same day, and they said paam haba glida
I wrote about the word “glida” and the expression here:
http://www.balashon.com/2006/09/glida.html
See also the comments.
Still not sure about the source of the expression…
The evil twin of that expression is the equivalent of “speak of the devil”, which is:
דבר על החמור, והחמור מגיע.
I think it’s pretty funny: “Speak of the donkey, and the donkey comes”.
Hi all!
Bye