Assign jQuery Element to Javascript variable?

Assign jQuery Element to Javascript variable?

Normally I would write a pure Javascript statement like:

var pane = document.getElementsByClassName("myclassname222")[0];

But what if jQuery offers a shorter way of identification? How can I assign an element from jQuery to Javascript variable?

The following does NOT work:

var pane = $("td:contains('sometext inside element')");

How else?

Peter