Hi,

You do not need to know any MSP (depending on what you want to achieve), but the basic max skills are required to do jitter stuff…as in knowing that information flows right to left e.g.
You will also require max objects in order to create jitter patches, things like pa(c)k, unpack, metro, bang, toggle,…and a heap of others.
But on the other hand, there’s no need learn everything there is to know about max before getting in to jitter, you can pick it up along the way*… but you might miss out on some valuable knowledge.

*but not by asking about every single bump in the road to this list.