I don't see how this requires you to know the intricacies of call/apply or how it would even force you to use it frequently enough to understand the difference.
Right, jQuery does it for you. You usually don't need to do it yourself unless you're contributing to jQuery (or another lib/framework that needs them).
I might ask someone about call and apply but wouldn't be overly concerned if they didn't remember the exact syntax or mixed them up. I've done the same myself. I wouldn't expect someone to remember every little nuanced part of a language, especially if it's not something they use frequently.