In my family we two Trees. What I call a vertical tree and a horizontal
one. The vertical is the regular research which most of us are doing
trying to research our past. The horizontal is registering all the
descendants of a certain ancestor.

In recent months I have been confronted within my chassidic family
objection to my registration of these descendants (my generation and
younger) primarily (i presume) for "ayin Hora" (evil eye) reasons. Can
anyone suggest a good rabbinical justification to use on these family
members or just to realize that this branch is lost to my registry since
nothing will work if I'm up against fears of "Ayin Hora"s.

If it matters, this branch of "Ayin Hora"ers are amongst the leading
Breslev chassidut in Israel.

I intended to use a midrashic (?) source regarding the repeated counting
of the tribes in the "Midbar" saying that due to G-d's love of Am Yisrael
he counted them over and over. What is this source?

Thank you and Shavua tov

Yoni Ben-Ari

p.s. Can't help an anecdote: Besides my very charedi cousins I also have
(>from the same ancestor) very principled secular cousins who wanted
nothing to do with the rest of the religious family. Recently this well
known antireligious cousin passed away and I went to the funeral with
copies of their branch of our ancestor's descendants hoping to meet new
cousins. I gave a copy of the family "horizontal" tree to the sister-in-
law of the deceased (the last time I gave it to her several years ago I
got no response). This time within two days she returned it with a remark
that her daughter are now expressing an interest in my project (in
contrast to their previous reaction) May be that this is the mitzva of
bringing together family member through this project? But what to do with
the charedi cousin?!