"All X Must Y" Is (almost always) Bullshit

I was told just last year by an Herbal School teacher with SWANA Jewish Ancestry that (essentially) "in order to be Jewish and properly connect with my Jewish ancestry, then I had to be an Animist because true ancestral Judaism was Animist" ... But while Judaism does have a stunning ecological theology that I absolutely love and am leaning into (as a Non-Animist)? Judaism actively rejects all notions that there is one correct way to be Jewish and instead actively encourages different viewpoints and expressions.

Anyone who tells you that you have to be X in order to be Y- where X is unrelated to the actual function of Y, especially when Y actively rejects the notion that it functions in any singular way? Ultimately is lying to you and has an agenda. And that agenda is, unfortunately, frequently one of non-positive control.

This is not to say that traditions do not have the right to selective self definition; that they do not get to set any kind of boundaries for what they are and are not, and how you must function in order to fall beneath their umbrella, however. Nor is it to say that these boundaries are not perfectly reasonable when they are applied.

An example of positive self-definition and boundaries is, for instance, Traditional Wiccans requiring Initiation and a foundation of specific ritual Praxis shared across Covens even if theology and other features may differ across the same groups.

But it is to say that if someone is telling you that you need to have X trait, participate in Y type of practice, or hold theology 2 in order to be something? It should be suspect to scrutiny in regards to how these things actually intersect with the practice they are claiming they're a supposed "requirement" of. And their agenda for putting these requirements in place should be questioned.

Saying someone "needs to be Animist to be Pagan" (or even to be Jewish, as in my earlier experience) or that "All Green Witches have a set of Ecological Moral Imperatives" (a la Arin Murphey-Hiscock's nonsense), that "All Pagans practice Ancestor Veneration", etc, are all examples of what I'm properly talking about, here.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with any of these things individually, none of these are functionally true across the board (though if they are personally true for you specifically, then kudos to you!). Stating them as imperative requirements to be a specific thing, therefore, all potentially point to a non-positive agenda of some kind and should be scrutinized and questioned as a result- and the people who claim them as such "requirements" should ultimately be suspect until such scrutinization proves otherwise.