I personally feel that jQuery is something you should work with, at least once.
There are numerous code bases that you'll run into that still use jQuery in some form, so some prior experience with it kind of helps ease into any place. 🙂
Not to mention that the reason jQuery became popular in the first place is that it made DOM manipulation easier for people. So if this question is from a what-should-I-pick-up-as-a-beginner point of view, jQuery's still got it's value. 😄
That being said, I never use jQuery in my day-to-day work and even if I have the opportunity to drop a $() in my code, I choose to go the vanilla JS route.
I use this a reference: youmightnotneedjquery.com